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Charting The Legacy Of The Baby Boomers
While it is difficult to properly attribute blame for the collapse of the US economy, which commenced in the early 1980s, on either the Fed's policy of easy money starting with Alan Greenspan (and terminating with today's statement by Goldman that merely a suggestion of "not easing" may be equivalent to "tightening" - a symptom of a terminal junkie), or the resultant self-indulgent lifestyle of the maturing baby boomers, one thing is certain: the paradigm downturn of the United States began in the early 1980s. And here we are willing to break the cardinal rule of statistics and assume that correlation does imply causation. Because the 4 simple charts below don't lie: the US economy, as represented by its Balance of Payments, the profligacy of the US consumer, the massive expansion of consumer leverage, and the collapse in US manufacturing jobs, and specifically its current near-terminal state, is as much as legacy of the baby boom generation's actions (and lack thereof), as of everything else that has already been mulled over and scapegoated an infinite number of times in both the mainstream and fringe media.
Charts courtesy of John Lohman
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The Fourth Turning
Indulged...yes,but let's not forget the greatest gen. Grew up during the depression then fought a bloody war for 5 years.( bear in mind it was the most bloody war humans have ever waged.) Considering those two extremely stressful events in a persons life I would submit many of the greatest gen were emotionally scared. Many were probably to mentally exhausted to be good fathers, a lot of which entails putting your foot down and saying no. Having grown up with extreme want it's not hard to see how they gave to much stuff to there children and not enough self control.
Yes the charts show the collapse beginning during Reagan but how much earlier were the controllers running things. They tried a coup during FDR so at least that old. They've been trying to claw back what they "lost" to the workers of this country at least since then.
The oligarchy gained control of wal st, Washington and Hollywood. Is it any wonder that generation is so f'd up. They lost there money to wall st, their culture to Hollywood and their rights to Washington and the only thing standing between them and that trifecta was an emotionally damaged young father. So yes they are messed up but there victims of the owner class as we all are.
Thanks, good points, well thought out, some things for me to mull over.
Maybe we can find some way to process and eat them?
Long Soylent.
All I know is that its everybody elses fault.
Notice where everything starts to accerate was when we had kids and spoiled the littled fukers , now they still want to live at home and smoke dope and cry about how unfair everything is. Guess it was our fault for spoiling your sorry asses. Guess you will know better................SUCKERS.............
Logans Run for you soon
i blame yur ever youthful and perky nipples,
does that make me a bad person? fur wantin' to
stick around? the divergent trajectory of the main is
alluring also.
Hey, at least most of the dope smokers these days don't feed the ponzi scheme with income tax revenue. Kind of hard to get a legitimate job with all the invasive corporate policies allowed these days! If anyone saves ass-backwards land, it will be.......we are screwed!
Jesus wept, you sound like some kinda baby-booming Hippie fur chrissakes! Get a grip man! Get a haircut! Get a job!
Hey! I'm sitting on 60 bottles of premium alcohol, get mistaken for a cop and I have 2 jobs! Shit! I was a new age hippie at one point tho!
What was GDP doing during the manufacturing plunge, and does the debt include inflating housing values.
I know lots of Boomers, they know we're screwed. They just hope it can last long enough for them to die.
My expectation is that the retiring Boomers get totally fucked over by their faith in the past's promises, and when they die, our corrupt oligarchy seizes all their "assets," leaving the offspring in a country owned by a few thousand people who can no longer afford to maintain the empire.
That'll take about the next 15-20 years. Then it'll get real interesting.
Biggest festering problem right now is that nobody is retiring.
I'm not a corrupt oligarch......but I do want real assets (no icrap) instead of fiat for services rendered.
Too bad, ain't enough for you to get a share. It's all going to the rich guys.
That's the whole point of this exercise.
Sounds plausable. Have fun with that!
It would have been worth looking at the chart of the Dow Jones too ... which was at 616 in Jan. 1960.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/djia1960.html
Boomers got screwed and will be eating dogfood and having their life supports unplugged to hurry along the actuarials to save the government money.
Boomers paid into all the Ponzis for decades like sheep. Their savings are getting wiped out. Their estates will be empty assets and government promises and they will be the bag holders.
gwar5 ~ Agree.
Its same old "BLAME GAME!"
THE 'BOOMERS' GOT NAILED TO THE PERVERBIAL CROSS ALL THEIR LIVES.
Not enough schools - the greatest generation floated 30 year bond issues to build them - after all the boomers will pay for them when they grow up! Same thing for hospitals, roads, bridges, airports, you name it the boomers paid for it.
Tax breaks? GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE!
When boomers were young and unmarried they got nailed by the tax man. Enough so that the incentive was to get married. Well guess what - after enough change in the married demographics - it was the married guy who the tax man nailed!
Too many young people? Send them to war. Good for business and very profitable to! At the same time kill off a few tens of thousands so you don't have to pay any pensions down the line!
So don't give me that "ITS ALL THE BOOMERS FAULT BULLSHIT!"
WE PAID HARD, AND ARE CONTINUEING TO GET THE ROYAL SCREW!
You forgot 20% interest rates with no credit anyway, no jobs, union-busting to break decent wages, crashing the stock market repeatedly to wipe out any gains, rampant cocaine abuse to replace pot and make everyone "motivated", and a buncha other bullshit I don't wanna remember because it still pisses me off so bad.
Yeah, good luck kids, I'm sure you'll do better with your own assortment of Fearless Leaders. You got a loooong mutherfuckin' row to hoe!
Right fucking on!
Now that the shoe is on the other foot - WEAR IT ASSHOLES!
Enjoy your cat food old man. Easy on the dentures.
Never trust anyone over 30.
30 lbs
fixed it
IQ
Never trust anyone.
or under 29
Can we please scoot that up a bit? 50? kthnxbai ;)
So who was president in 1980? Oh thats' right Bush I
(and his vice pres Ronald Raygun)
GOOD NIGHT AMERICA
That's like saying who was president in 2008 fucking Biden and his brain dead VP obummer. That's when it happened, right, and that's who was president, right?
Fuck read a book sometime.
There are two typs of people in the world, those who think that macroeconomic problems are explainable by looking through the various partisan lenses of political narrative economies, and those who have a clue.
Jimmy Carter? Fuck people, if you're going to try to imply something at least get your facts straight.
Oh, so now it is the Boomers that created the problem and not the Fed. Nothing like keeping people pitted against each other to divert attention to the real problem.
they certainly didn't help, dontchya thunk
prains
they certainly didn't help, dontchya thunk
Perfect, hell no.................but by no means the worst. Those charts just show numbers, and not what they were for and why they are what they are.( or the main CULPRITS).
Lets add some caveats to this materialism binge.
Like putting Gen X'er kids thru college, buying them automobiles, clothes ,fancy Jordan tennis shoes, and doing what the Greatest Gen did............GAVE their kids, a better life than they had.
Each Gen always wants to make it better for their kids,(if their decent parents) than they had it( unless they all had silver spoons up their ass),and it was free.College?, shit, expected byX's & Y's ,Boomer's?, pay their own way, if they got to even go.
Boomer's, esp the early ones, did not have SHIT handed to them(ask me how I know), we worked for all we got.We paid for what we got, and we didn't run up bills that we could not pay off.............We had manners, Yes Sir, No Sir, we respected authority, and our elders. We acted up and a total stranger would whip our ass, and Mom and Dad would do it again............and thank the stranger.
You judgmental ba*&^@#$ that have NO CLUE how tough it was for most of the SELFISH BOOMER'S.
agree to your point, but the analysis is regarding a certain "slice" of their legacy. Sure, I do have a Ph.D, for example, because of exactly this generational / aspirational bubble. But here we are, no?
I highly recommend: the tragic does not involve "blame" in the catholic sense; shit happens, and you can usually trace the shit, but yeah, shit happens. And sometimes, the end of that is very sad, despite putting human beings into orbit, letting a thousand points of light bloom etc.
Dos, funny thing i'm closer to your age than you think, came out grinnin '67, makes me a tweener. but also allowed me the chance to watch both sides.
Two degrees later I still work on the end of a hammer everyday, blood sweat and stitches. broken every finger except two some more than once and from that perspective
i'll call bullshit on the boomer generation. rape and pillage for personal fulfillment is the boomer creed, sharing with your kids doesn't make it alright. we are here because of you
and now it has to be fixed in spite of you. so sayeth the haka.
they are the original bubble. why did all those homecoming soldiers have to fuck so much?
Tv. was just getting mass produced back then and the programs were shit. What would you do?
stop? that train left the station quite some time ago. and it's not stopping until it runs out of tracks, since it was never equipped with a brake.
As a boomer I would like to say that tomorrow may belong to the children but today is ours, so fuck'em........
Jamie? Is that you?
I'm long on that one; the interesting thing is, when the kids go, no, fuck YOU lol
You whining gen x pups are just jealous--cuz-you missed out-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsnUu71Viyo
Fuck that.
http://youtu.be/QL0kp3uBLS4
On what...Fern Bars?
Gag me with a spoon.
My boomer dad told me he wished he lived the way I lived in my 20's. He was too busy saving for the sold "American Dream" of home ownership. Yeah, what a dream!!!!
Unless we get some of actual manufacturing of real usable stuff back to our shores, we are totally screwed. We had such a good thing going and now it's all but gone. Most of what we manufacture anymore are weapons of mass destruction and fraudulent financial instruments. Pathetic.
the former still is always a sound capital investment. old school.
two comments:
-Harvard MBA's showed up about in the mid 80's and revitalized corporate Wall Street worship and job shifting overseas leading to our middleclass demise
-WalMart...started the Everybody Can Afford To Buy Everything in the 80's also.
Dead malls dot com.
The ultimate the the Altar of the Dollar.
Walmart was just a shit southern corner store in those days.
i won't argue against the responsibility of the boomer generation even though the the great majority always played on the dark side of the status quo. i will say it was has been quite the party. thanx. now it's time for gen x,y and millenials to get off your asses, quit whining and do something useful like make lemonade.
Anything to pass the time while the older generation dilutes their claims on future cash flows to nada.
dilutes their claims on future cash flows to nada.
that's what the lemonade is for, special lemonaide......
millions of the truly worthless generation will be the benefactors of boomer wealth so they can continue their uselass ways ad infinitum, slacking in perpetuity.
Thank god, cause I am working way too hard to pay these school loans those assholes put in front of me as soon as I could make a legally binding contract.
you don't know sht. lol. my college age kids are facing the same dilemna. on the one hand i want them to pay for college on their own like i did. it builds character to eat pasta 5 days/week while carrying a full load and working 30 hours/week trying to save enough for 2 dollar beer blasts, keggers and a bag of weed. on the other hand, i recognize that isn't possible anymore. the college debt trap is insidious, personally and on a macro level. here you have millions of kids trying to get started in life with a financial burden that is strangling their purchasing power for the stuff that makes the economy run, limiting their upward mobility in aggregate. the first 100 grand is the most difficult. making it more difficult is stupid.
my kids probably wish their father was a forty something gen xer. they got a boomer, antiestablishment trouble maker instead who has turned into a playful, crusty, old bastard who keeps them on their toes mentally and physically. bashing the young generation is entertainment well deserved.
you think you know shit but you dont. paying for college yourself is a much different thing today and you experience means nothing in this context.
We will, only after you learn how formulate appropriate sentence structures!
zh is a little better than the grammar police. try not to be so petty and maybe someone will pay attention.
pretty sure they are just taking lots of acid and waiting for you guys to get just a wee bit more frail, before we simply unplug you
my kids can't wait until i probably unplug myself. fear and loathing and all that.
Agree that 1980's was the start.
But after 9/11 Bush really did a nasty on the debt side with his Shop! Spend! speech. And man did people follow that.
In terms of my date of birth, I'm right in the middle of the 'bulge' but in terms of being a boomer, I think I fail (glad to say)
No debt - other than that imposed by government.
Some metal - wish I had more.
Physically fitter than most 30 year olds - can still cycle 50-60 miles with no problem.
Minimal polluter - no car.
Great to be a failure!
Oh yeah...who's up for a little inter-generational class warfare?
What? War fare against my Mom? Oh lordy!! Say tis isnt so..
lol...yeah, much better to blame the ones who sheltered, clothed and fed you than the ones who steal your liberty and your earnings everyday.
What's the world coming t....wait...my Mom & Dad used to say that ;-)
Yes, But its our moms
Attention Walmart shoppers stop? Couldnt it wait till fucking Saturday?
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/15/walmart-to-offer-new-ipad-beginning-...
and the collapse in US manufacturing jobs, and specifically its current near-terminal state
WHO sent these jobs over seas, and allowed them to go to cheap Global Sweatshops?.THE US GOVT,as part of the plan from 1949 by John D Rockefeller, and the birth of the UN in 1949.
His goal, and that of the cabal now in total control, used this as a guise to STOP ALL WARS.Also, we were full swing into the EPA swing.........
Because if nations depended on other nations for goods, and services, the Nationalistic warring would cease.
Want to swing the bat a bit further, look at the Unions......and the Boomer's spending not only on themselves, but their KIDS.
A lot of which carouse this site.
There is a lot more going on, and went on here than just CHARTS.
You can't really blame the whole generation, as many were the ones laid off of manufacturing jobs.
You have to blame the leadership and/or lack of it.
A majority of that generation voted for non-debt spending but were sold out by equivocating Republicrats.
A majority got raped by Wall Street 2000 to the present (at least) and are going to get it again when the current equity bubble collapses just as they are being told that "the economy is recovering" and that law and order have been "restored".
What choice do the current younger generations have? Vote for Obama? Vote for Romney? What will either change? Nothing. Ron Paul has a lot of support but not enough to overcome the dim witted sheeple on both sides of the political spectrum.
Think of the commercials pre-2008 collapse and now appearing again: equity loans, credit card offers, impossible pension and investment returns, buy-buy-buy! Spend, spend, spend! Borrow, borrow, borrow!
Until profligate behavior is punished by consequence (failure) and theft and law breaking are prosecuted (bailouts, MF Global, 2005 Supine Court KELO decision) we are all phuked.
Sad but true, my generation has absolutely no choice. So, the only choice I have is minimal contribution to the BEAST. Oh well, I saw a better economy years ago and lived it up. Bring on the misery, I can take it.
The baby Boomers not only killed the economy they killed what America was all about.
I could write a thesis on the subject but I'll take just one point.
Gay Marriage -
Flower Power Baby!!!!
A society needs boundries.
So we allow gay marriage. Cool. Gay people NEED to get married. What about polygamists? They should have a right to marry legally. Now let's take it a step further. Transvestites. We should have transgender polygamy communities. Good. America accepts this as it should.
So in 20 years we will be a country of transgendered polygamist colonies where gay men with vaginas rule the world.
God bless America.
I was there and absolutely nobody was talking about gay marriage. Whatever generation is responsible for Disco should take the rap for the whole Gay Movement thing getting started. It weren't us.
You must be a fictional character. No one could possibly be that stupid.
I know this is kinda personal, Bob, but...
I think you need to be gettin' more sex.
Nice straw man!
Did you build him all by yourself, or did uncle Santorum come by and lend a hand?
Government and love do not go together.
All this talk about generations is a canard. It's being used to justify the looting of SS and reneging on other promises, to exploit oedipal anger, thus distract, deflact attention from the real causes, the real crimes and betrayals. Read Bernays, Freud's nephew . . . he wrote the book and theyve been using it since the 20s.
Strauss and Howe
Shallow catholic rhetoric... more aptly named The 4th Turd ... faith-based tripe ... "bring back tradition!" it screams... a true believer's rote catechism. The 4th Turd is prescriptive, traditionalist, 'virtue-cratic', mombo-jombo, mixed with puritanism and a dash of Tipper Gore. Bring back values like honour and duty, observe decency in personal conduct, discipline, develop tighter societal standards, traditional virtues.When it's not talking about early historical eras, the book is bemoaning the ever-branching diversity of choices and lifestyles in modern life or criticizing the edginess of pop culture.
All the absurd theory about supposed cycles of the supposed generations, the fabled historical parallels, the dire warning that a new era of crisis is to come, is just an excuse to tell readers to prepare for a crisis era that may or may not be coming by celebrating the importance of authority; cease unconventional behaviour in an era that will demand conformity, and settling down to focus on prescribed values. A hollow diatribe, pushing to get back to trust in public institutions and in the government... more restrictions on personal behaviour.
Advice to set up strict regimes of rules, zero tolerance of conflicting opinions, demands on conduct and development to make sure that children can grow up to be the next 'HERO' generation, as they are corraled as fodder for the eternal crusades... a heavily conservative bent sticking out like a sore thumb, no doubt reflecting some of the attitudes and wishes of infamous liars.
The theory about "generations" and "turnings", the quotes and events of early historical generations are only fished out of the shallow AmeriKlan Sea, and, more importantly, ignore the rest of the world... only to find a few lame examples that will make the generations seem to fit into the imaginary pattern.
Worse yet, the portraits painted of the four recurring generational archetypes in the whannabee theory, the predications are incredibly vague and sound like weakly created parodies.
Of course many theories will run into a FEW problems like this, but The 4th Turd is whipped up to sound just convincing enough to sell an authoritarian ideology.
Though there is some element of truth in The 4th Turd, certainly mankind's recorded experiences have been one of cyclical ebb and flow, one cannot make anywhere near the many pat characterizations and conclusive and farfetched leaps of simple reason and logic.
If intended as a work of propaganda, the book is perfect, for all good propaganda contains enough of an element of probable truth to be plausible.
Most everything in this book is arranged and written with the assumption that the thesis is essentially correct, a mode which is overreaching, suspect, and at best sloppy.
The wholesale grading & categorization of people is facile, diminishing, and overly fatalistic.
The book is an oligarchic collectivist's wet dream. The warning is that we are but mindless automatons, locked in an endless and stupid cycle of mass destruction, following our collectivist predestination, but that we might fail and then woe is to us. A stock false choice if there ever was one.
Either these guys were commissioned to write this stuff, or they have a more than adequate knack for figuring out which way the ill wind is blowing and sucking up to the NWO Elites for fun and profit.
Where in The 4th Turd is the experience of Korea, Viet Nam, the Cold War, all the endless wars, Globalism, consumer society, etc. etc.?
The TRUTH of September 11, 2001, when it is dealt with openly and properly, will be the pivot to the next TURNING.
Truth might finally emerge someday in the semi-consciousness of people. Best take that ameriKlan ring out of your noses!
Yep. Thanks.
Short Hippies...
As a boomer-i knew things were fucked up bad back in 69 -
Sugar Sugar by the Archies was voted # 1 song of the year-beating out the Beatles-Hey Jude and Revolution-
The results of the vote were released at midnight on new years eve 1969-
I knew then-that i mingled with a very small tribe and the rest of the humans were a danger to themselves and the world-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqC_Gma221M
that was '69? bubblegum rock. at least the monkees made actual music. they started the end of rocknroll. as i recall 1969 was also the beginning of fm radio, real underground rocknroll, for a few years anyway.
Have a look at all these chaarts from 2000 on.
The lines are really steep.
Mmm.. the miracle of modern finance.
Who would have thought that extending credit for consumption instead of productive investment wouldn't end well?
We all had a really good time. We had plenty of sex, plenty of drugs, and the best rock n' roll of all time. Factories and big companies were all hiring and we had cheap gas for our Road Runners and GTOs with big-ass V8s.
Now you tell me....with all that going on around you, would any of you have headed for a monastery to wear a hairshirt? Hell no! You would have partied your ass off like the rest of us. Don't ask me to feel bad for those years so many are jealous of. You want to fine all of us for entering the Time Line when we did? Send me a detailed, itemized bill and I'll get back to you. Until then, piss off!
Also corresponds to when people rebelled against the restraint of putting on a sweater and embraced the genius of Reaganomics. People still talk about putting him on Mt. Rushmore.
Thing about the boomers is that the human population has run a bit like a Ponzi scheme - always need more to look after the previous lot, due largely to government stupidity. Did all the politicians for the last 50 years not know that there was a huge bulge in population who would all retire in a short time span? If they had been doing the job they claim to do, representing their constituents (now there's a novel concept!), they would have planned for what was coming, rather than planning for their re-election above all else and spending every penny they could steal for their own ends.
How can you tell when a politician is lying? ..... You can see his lips moving.
Funny thing is, the earth is finite.
Makes sense. The parents of Boomers are the guilty parties here because they came back from the war horny and married a bunch of sluts and produced the spike in the population chart. Makes as much sense as the rest of the sanctimonius bullshit envious non-boomers are posting.
Chairman at the NWO .0001% bankster meeting:
Divide and conquer boyz. Stir them up to direct their rage away from us. Pit old against young, black against white, east against west. Haves against have nots. That's the way!
Posted by Jesse at 2:01 PM
Real Estate 4 Ran$om: Role of Speculation in Financial Collapse - The Recurrency of Fraud
"This is an Australian produced film, but the principles carry." ...
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
Hi folks, it's that time again to play..."Blame The Demographic", with your host Wink Martindink.
And today we'll be playing for a History book! You can start with Howard Zinn's A Peoples History Of The United States.
It might help your perspective some and may even relieve a lot of that misguided hatred and angst towards ol' Pops and his Chevy. Real Good Deal-O!
If nothing else, we have those memories...
Before alzheimers!
Hell, if it weren't for the flashbacks, I'd have no long term memory at all.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/
The Self-Attribution Fallacy
November 7, 2011
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th November 2011
"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes."
...
.
"In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded(4). Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family you’re likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family you’re likely to go to business school."
While I enjoy blaming boomers as much as the next guy and they definetly should have changed the philosophy that has caused this mess the real problem started in early 1900. Progressives invaded the education institutions and their ideaology of altruism began to run rampant.
The problems he have today are a problem with failed philosophies. Those philosophies eminate from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the other top notch schools. The idealogies espoused from these institutions percolate out to the media (NY Times) and then to the regional media and politicians.
As long as pragmatism grounded in an ethic of altruism (sacrifice for the greater good) is the driving philosophy of this country we will continue the downward spiral. Until people accept that rational self interest is the only moral way to live the thieves will continue to steal from the producers and redistribute to the parasites with the backing of the majority and the democracy which has a monopoly on the use of force.
Rational self interest or death and destruction that is the choice.
Rational self interest is what drives Wall Street to exploit the sheeple. The best and the brightest look for the greater good of corporate and personal profit over a sustainable economy. If that means outsourcing jobs, creating debt slaves, and funneling the wealth of our economy to the 1%, all the better.
Your kind of thinking is the biggest problem we have to overcome. Individualism and its phony American Dream are what will continue to turn us into a nation where the few are served by the unfortunate masses. The "producers" have used wage arbitrage to steal any way of earning a living wage.
There is no such thing as the greater good. If there is give me the definition. It is only a abstraction that is used to steal wealth from producers.
Wall streets ability to steal is a direct result of the belief in the greater good. As long as that is the goal of this society the wealth generators will be robbed until we are living on subsistance.
Rational self interest or death and destruction that is the choice.
Who do you think you are calling people the masses and sheeple as if they are one big pile of goo, well they are not. They are individuals with their own hopes dreams and aspirations. If you dont think they should pursue their values then I say you are a sick and sorry piece of garbage and you better not try and stop me.
Reagan (no baby boomer) started all this with Reaganomics, saying, “Government deficits don’t matter.” What Reagan should have said was, “government deficits don’t matter to me. I’ll be long gone by the time they do matter.” Bush senior had it right: calling Reaganomics what it is, “voodoo economics.” We are living today with what Reaganomics brought.
Also, Reagan was a union buster. He went after PATCO, the federal air traffic controllers union, and disbanded them when they went on strike. Reagan’s policy was clear, with manufacturing union employment paying the price.
reaganomocs was about the exportation of inflation, buying something for nothing. who wouldn't get hooked on that dope?
So you're saying God has feet of clay? Reagan a mere mortal? The air has been drained from the room. What is the point of going on?
Reagan begat Bush, but Bush appeared to Reagan through the graces of the CIA which assinated Kennedy and destroyed their dynasty, making room for the Bush Dynasty to arise and acquire the wealth and power to make God himself blush.
what we are living through is a result of the consolidation of the power structure and their financial resources into an ever smaller number of ever wealther families and the corporations they own. Walmart for example or Arbusto Oil.
Damn... if only I was conceived a few short months later, I could bitch too.
Then I'd know where to place my blame.
I could implicate "people born between this date and that date."
I'm sure I'd feel better.
I could neglect history, I could dispense with emotional intelligence, and I could even glance right over leadership.
That would be great!
But what a farce that would be.
So I will remain true to myself, have empathy for anyone regardless of age, remind myself that this "generation" thing is shallow, short-sighted, demonstrates the age-old (sorry) behavior of humans to attempt to find an easiest-explanation-and-target...
and mostly demonstrates that no matter the crises we face, again and again, we never grow up.
Good luck to all.
As a Boomer and one raised by Libertarian parents who were smart enough to teach me the press was in bed with the government I have an entirely different perspective. Most here who are generally very informed about today’s situation seem to be terribly ignorant of the quality of information in the 70s and the 80s. First the apex of America was not the 80s and then it all went to hell because of the greedy Boomers. The apex was the early 70s with the cancellation of the Apollo Project signaling the end of American expansion in to space. Like all empires/great societies, they grow expand, reach a maximum, then start to collapse as more and more resources are consumed by the central governments which prevents further expansion. The graphs show the RESULT of what was passed in the 60s and the 70s with Johnson’s Great Society of greatly expanding the welfare state. The bills started to come due in the 80s.
What most here fail to grasp as you quickly blame the Boomers for being greedy and selfish is there was no Zero Hedge, Drudge, Market Ticker, Burning Platform….There was no Internet, no cable TV, no talk radio…there was only ABC, CBS, NBC, and Public Radio. It was Progressive/ Keynesian propaganda the Boomers entire life.
Before you pound your chest and proclaim yourself so well informed (you are) understand the Boomers were never exposed to what you have from an information perspective. They did not know anything but Progressivism/ Keynesianism which has brought us to this point of near collapse. Heck even today with all the available information, idiots still think Progressivism/Keynesianism works.
It is easy to call someone stupid and greedy when you know the facts, but what you must understand they were never exposed to what you know today. They were conned and snookered.
"What most here fail to grasp as you quickly blame the Boomers for being greedy and selfish is there was no Zero Hedge, Drudge, Market Ticker, Burning Platform….There was no Internet, no cable TV, no talk radio…there was only ABC, CBS, NBC, and Public Radio."
And... ain't it sorta ironic that Steve Jobs became/was/is (so it appears) a hero of the post-boomers... and all that that entails.
there were newspapers and radio with as many varied opinions as there were owners. today, there are more media outlets but fewer different messages unless the internet is trolled. back then there were more people with different ideas than today. there were regional(northeat, south, mid west, west and california) and even intra state differences. today, everyone is largely the same, a much bigger herd of sheep.
there was something called books even way back in the 60's.
did thomas jefferson and goergo washington and the founding fathers have the internet? nope.
That 'red line' also coincides with the amesty of some 6 million illegal immigrants and the flood illegals, asylum seekers and legal immigrants from third world nations hasn't stopped yet. In truth at the end of the baby boom the US population was about 190 million. The additional 120 million US residents since 1965 were not the progeny of what you would call baby boomers.
Do you do that for "warmth"?
I got 99 problems but being a boomer ain' one, if you got retirement problems I feel bad for you son
This is yet another red herring post by ZH. What caused Global Financial Crisis(GFC)? There is a very simple and obvious answer:
BANKS CREATE CREDIT MONEY OUT OF THIN AIR
Looking at these charts makes me wonder. Whatever happened to going to work every day, earning a decent living, and living within your means?????
flat real wage for 40 years, (1.02)^40-1 inflation from govt stats, and cheap, easy money at every turn. people are people. we still get fat because our genes still dont believe we wont go a week without a kill when we have two mcdonalds in line of sight.
No one generation's fault...just the cycle... We were ALL handed much, but reached for it all.
Just the way life and human nature works.
The boomers(my generation) were lots of flakes, but hardly all. and many exceptionally good; their nose-pierced off-spring even flakier, but not all. The next generation...maybe the cycle turns and we get a reset.
Damn, Tyler outed us Boomers. Now, everyone will know that all 60 million of us have a secret teleconference at 2:OO am, to plan the course of ME wars, dollar debasement, market manipulation, and Social Security Ponzi fraud. Now everyone will realize that we all think and act exactly alike, and our mores and values are perfectly in line with the banksters, the PTB, the congressclowns, and the Keynesians. No, not one of us in an economic Austrian, or a political Libertarian.
Fortunately, for the world, every person born after the late 60's is altruistic, generous, spiritual, self-reliant, hard-working, and hates only disco.
If they truly hate disco, then we have raised them right. The rest will easily take care of itself...
Tyler is, as usual, spot on: the unraveling of the social and economic status quo began in the early 80's and led us directly to the current crisis period, which began with the market collapse in 2000. However, it is not at all as simple as blaming it on the boomer generation. This generation is typical of the type that is born of a certain era and comes of age in another type of era. They simply developed in response to their circumstances.
I recommend to all who linger here at ZH to read The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe for a fuller explaination of this generational procession. And prepare to be amazed at the regularity with which this has played out over the centuries.
To all Gen Xers and Millenials, this is how you fight the boomers and make them eat shit pie as they age:
1) Never buy conventional stocks or bonds, ever again. Put your money in cash, metals, and physical goods/barter/survivalism
2) Turn off the tv and stop being a consumer whore. Buy only what you need, and take care of it. Buy stuff that lasts. Reduce expenditures and save money. If a boomer wants to sell you their used goods or houses, demand firesale prices.
3) Stay as healthy as you can. Quit bad habits and get in shape.
4) Stop fighting and trying to climb over people of your own age. Think "possible ally" rather than competitor.
Let the geezers choke on their fiat investments and medicines as they slowly but surely take the trip to the great beyond.
Of course, not that I think any of this will happen. The young ones are broke, dependent on mommy and daddy and have their heads buried in their ipads.
If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.
Where I fault the boomers, is for the cultural turmoil they have represented. Maybe it's media narrative now that I think about it, but every institution that formed and stabilized society was not just questioned, but thrown out whole cloth. Marriage, church, gender roles, family. With nothing left to replace the constructs. There is and has been little to no guidance. Little to no morality. Capitalism without morality is one aspect to all that is blogged about here.
The state will take full advantage. Public school now includes a shout-fest praising INGSOC damn near. Youll know they'vewon when they change Jesus' name to "Goldberg from Nazareth. "
Generational vigilance is the more relevant conversation. One could just as easy blame technology on the productivity decline.
The "$" charts reflect many things; generational demographics playing only a minor role, such as [lack of] productivity and building equity.
The good news is that Xers get to see how heavy the weight of the world really is. From Iraq to Texas, its on them, next.
Bring it!
Something else happened at 1980 ended and 1981 began - the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the beginning of the neocon era.
The Fed's doing the only thing they know how to do -- keeping the patient alive with an adrenaline drip. Congress and the White House are slipping him pizza and smokes when no one's watching. And, the American public...we're so engrossed in daytime TV in the hospital lounge that we can't hear the heart monitor blaring.
Today, the 2,056th anniversary of Caesar's death at the hands of his "friends", I found myself thinking about how Bernanke, like Caesar, is under attack by the politicians -- who need him more than anyone.
http://pebblewriter.blogspot.com/2012/03/happy-anniversary-march-15-2012...
Were the trouble makers in 1968 baby boomers? Nuff said.
Entirely depends on which trouble you deem important. The Vietnam war? the generals and the politicians were the trouble makers. The race riots? I'd have to blame decade of repression and the fine work of the FBI assinating or imprisoning all the community leaders, especially black panthers.
troublemakers? this nation used to be up to our asses in 'em. The nation was founded by a bunch of them. Now they're all anethestized by tv, drugs and the internet (number 1 source of porn for nearly 4 decades - likely the 2nd or 3rd file ever transferred at darpa was a picture of some breasts)
Trouble makers? We could use a few more, we seem to have lost our way and our will to change things.
YOu are right about the porn. High tech so we can get naked pictures of women and I C U tecnology so the hookers are virtual. Geez. Kind of sad, really. Maybe aliens did make us from monkeys, we can't break out of our programming. Who would of have thought Ancient Aliens on the history channel got it right? Women searching the interwebs for shoes, men searching the interwebs for the ideal shaped and acting women. woow. Those aliens gave us some fucked up dna.
In 1979 the whole deal was laid out by the last real man to ever occupy the White House. You know, the speech that Newt Gingrich can't get out of his head more than 30 years later. The Malaise Speech where the word malaise was never uttered. It was a warning about consumerism, oil dependence and a possible decline in the long standing US trade surplus. At least we didn't get another cowboy dude lined up, Romney isn't a joke at least.
"Old age and treachery win out over youth and enthusiasm every time."
Malcom Forbes
This boomer generation meme is bullshit. Boomers are supposed to be 1946 to 1964, but people born 1962 have more in common with people born 1968 than with people born 1950, and people born 1946 have more in common with people born 1942 than with people born 1964.
The real differences are young (wanting free school) against middle and old, middle (wanting low taxes and free birth control and childcare) against young and old, old (wanting high interest and free medical care) against young and middle.
Not to mention government employees against taxpayers, taxpayers against free riders, etc.
In any generation, the difference in life experience can be start among the sub groups. Mother's sisters were Depression/New Deal, Mother was WWII, and her family had no Tyktovs. That is three subsets with entirely different references.
Boomers are divided into Babies, Minis and Reaganites. Even though my brother and I were raised in the same family, the economics of the time shaped our experiences. Life was difficult for the Babies, times were hard. I don't know why anyone thinks the 50's were hot; they were not. Brother was a Mini. The economy was much better when he was growing up.
Blaming Boomers for all the woes is an easy out. It is intellectually lazy.
Of course, the economy is the part of the problem. The American Empire is the part of the problem. But, something that is overlooked is the emergence of Transgenerational Protected Classes that began to rise in number and power around the time of the Cold War. As far as I can see with what research that I have done, the TPC tend to be conservative to protect and expand their power base.
In one community that I am looking at, their TPC controls 73% of the economy. The TPC's wages are about 168% of non-TCP wages. And the community votes in the high 70's to 80% GOP.
It is fascinating.
Talkin about Miami, hombre?
Nope. Correct state, but much further north. The area we call UCLA (unknown corner of lower Alabama).
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
Jimmy Carter
July 15, 1979
We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias.
Jimmy Carter
July 15, 1979
The baby boomers were the first generation to be programmed by TELEVISION. Previous generations got their notions of right and wrong from their parents, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders and neighbors. But boomers (and later generations) spent more time watching television than anything else and they picked up most of their ideas on how people should behave from TV sitcoms, news commentators, rock stars, etc.
Television has always been the tool of the statist elite. So it is only natural that the boomers would have been programmed to be debt slaves.
not quite right. gen x is the real tv generation. much of the baby boomer generation didn't have tv or even a tv set and there were only a coupla channels to watch if you had a tv. cable tv didn't come to our town until 1980 and there were only 8 channels. the boomer generation was the last generation to play outside every day and all day on saturdays and sunday after church.,
Television became popular in the late 50's and by 1960 pretty much everyone had one (except maybe in small towns and rural areas). Most major cities had three networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) and a public broadcasting channel.So even an early boomer born in 1945 would have had television from age 15 on. Or earlier if their parents were well off.
And it is not so much how many channels you have as how much time you spend watching them.
In the 60's everyone was talking about the "Generation Gap" where young people had different ideas of right and wrong than their parents. Where did young people get those new ideas of right and wrong? From television.
Television in its early days was a far cry from the sanitized homogenized horseshit it has become. The boomers were raised in an era dominated by radio, hence rock n roll.
Tv ,even in the late sixties in some markets, was still signing off the air at midnight or 1 or 2 am. that doesn't happen anymore.
Television was both more diverse and more putrid and easily ignored. Lo-fi sound, terrible graphics, black and white over the air broadcast low resolution snowy fucking picture somebody turn the aerial, we can't see ed sullivan.
It wasn't television that brainwashed anybody, it was the CIA. Television was just a rusty knife in their arsenal at that point in time. newspapers, radio and magazines held sway and were owned or infiltrated by the cia. Google capital cities and the cia. You'll find the cia tied at the hip to many media outlets which have conviently been reduced to 5 major companies.
Tv is a modern tool of brainwashing, but in the sixties it was just a labratory experiment.
It did not come on until late in the afternoon, and signed off at 10. Stupid shows on two networks.
It's not the content, it was the medium that was so powerful.
What do you think McLuhan was talking about?
The "brainwashing" was initially accidental. The wunderkind had no idea what they were doing in the early days, so I can understand why you'd be so dismissive of teevee's influence in the '60s. But in fact, teevee was probably directly responsible for the US action in Vietnam.
If Nixon had beaten Kennedy in 1960, things would've looked a great deal different.
It was also the first new generation in the U.S. after Edward Bernays and his students. So they were driven psycologically to buy stuff, just to keep up with the Jones so to speak. Two generations before this was not the case -- people bought mostly out of need and for function (not out of shear desire, indulgence, and image). Increased salaries, growth and a new house/car/boat/etc. all went hand in hand.
In many ways I see Chinese culture and consumer purchases partly driven by appearances (certainly status and car make go hand-in-hand). When you see a top-of-the-line Bentley Sedan or a stoggy RR sedan you know it is a top Party Member, while all the business class mostly drive BMW, Audi, etc.
Who is ZH? They're Wall Street refugees under 40; they were either chased out of Wall Steet by SEC for insider trading or they thought the sky was falling and took their loot and ran away.
Now they are complaining that their loot can't earn 'rent seeking' return because interest rates are too low and their ex-confederates at the FED are debasing value of their loot. Well scum, you are going to have to go to work like everyone else and work until you are 75.
Do something useful you maggots of ZH.
How nice is it to walk into someones house and piss all over the foyer? Perhaps a less agressive approach with the same emphasis would be more appropriate? Either way next time take out your little wee wee before you go pee pee.
Let me tell you a secret: debt is not inter-generational. All this talk you hear about saddling next generations with debt is nonsense.
This game is being played over and over again like the "Groundhog Day" , now 5,000 years and some.
If one is going to start assigning blame, let start with understanding what D E B T is. Each dollar of debt is someone's asset. Go find people with the most assets, and you surely going to be on the right track.
The bloggers here are so narcissistic, greedy and socio-pathological-- it's sickening. I read many things.....and this blog is PURE EVIL.
Pure evil! http://youtu.be/L3BDY3tfs8M
philosohpies are generational and the boomers believed stealing from one person and giving itto another wa moral. sorry it isnt moral and it isnt practical. call zh what you will the generation of boomers is undeniably the generation of the most viscious thieves known to man. gengas kan would be envious of their ability to loot